


second choice

by seh28



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:53:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23163556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seh28/pseuds/seh28
Summary: post season 1 finale. michael hasn't been seen at the wild pony for almost two weeks; maria goes to the airstream to check on him.
Relationships: Maria DeLuca & Michael Guerin, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	second choice

She can’t quite get her bearings.

Which doesn’t bode well considering she’s already made the decision and his gaze had already registered her truck. 

She vacillates between feeling silly and feeling brave. 

Assuring herself that she’s going to leave with what she came there to collect: answers.

As she hops out of the truck and strides toward his seated frame, the contents of his environment come into clear view. 

Beer bottles are strewn about, flames of the fire just barely meandering, a fifth of whiskey on a tree stump that doubled as a small table.

His red-rimmed eyes bleary but fixed as she approaches.

He’s alone as far as she can tell, and wasted would be too kind a term to appoint.

“You want me to think you disappeared off the face of the planet, Guerin?”

He almost chuckles at her choice of words.

He hasn’t been to the bar in nearly two weeks. 

Not since that night she’d finally set her guard aside and after thumbing a few chords on the guitar, he basically bolted out the door with no more than a few vague words as an explanation.

“You have another sign for me to fix? A piece of jewelry I can repair?” 

His mouth covers his words like someone inebriated and in pain.

“Would that help?”

“I don’t know.”

He takes a swig of beer, doesn’t take his eyes off her as if he’s also drinking from a visual well. 

She suddenly has an overwhelming urge to shelve all the things she originally came to say to him in favor of just offering some show of support.

It was obvious he was in a bad way and it had been at Liz’s fervent request that Maria go check on him after he’d basically disappeared.

So there she was, having a million questions and a million doubts but yet one very visceral response to the mere sight of him.

Before her sat someone in such a clear state of agony. 

And while she knew what some of it was about, a part of what highlighted it was the obviousness surrounding that piece that had actually always been present.

Underneath that charming, tempered bravado. 

He was aching. He was angry. He was lost.

And she sees it so clearly in him at that moment but doesn’t trust herself to broach that physical plane.

She wants to snark at him. She wants to shout at him. She wants to comfort him.

But right then she actually couldn’t decide.

“Want a beer?”

She lightly shakes her head in protest.

“Guer, I’m so sorry about…”

The rest gets stuck in her throat. His jaw clenches and he looks away for the first time since she arrived.

She can almost detect a shrug.

“I’ll be next,” he mumbles. 

Her eyes narrow.

“Why would you say that?”

He completely bypasses that question.

“Sorry I didn’t come back… I uh, I couldn’t.”

She nods. It’s obvious Max meant way more to him than she had originally thought.

She wonders why she didn’t pick up on it before.

She wonders why she didn’t pick up on so many different things becoming increasingly clear yet decidedly more muddled the more she thought about it.

“Can we still have that talk?” His expression looked almost hopeful.

She doesn’t reply. Just watches him. 

Like she’s gauging the weight of the moment and how she feels about it.

“Sit?”

She shakes her head again.

Something is collapsing around her understanding of him and this crazy town and how it all just doesn’t fit.

“This isn’t about us. I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“Let’s make it about us and I’m not.”

He pours from the already open bottle of whiskey into the glass that isn’t quite empty.

“You maybe wanna slow down?” Maria suggests.

“Not at all. You wanna catch up?”

“Michael…”

The glass pauses at his mouth. His first name almost felt foreign on her tongue. 

“I’m not a second choice,” Maria proclaims.

“Is that what you think?” His expression goes sad for the first time. Before it was all pain infused with anger. Now he just looks like a forlorn puppy.

“You must admit there is a discrepancy in the timing.”

He takes another swig of his drink and sighs.

“You’re not a second choice, Deluca. You’re the sun.”

Her stomach flutters.

“You’re blinding, disorienting and so, so warm. So you’re the fucking sun.”

And he fully chuckles for the first time, though it’s fundamentally lacking mirth.

“And you’re also like the first sip of cool water, which is something I never even knew was possible or real…”

He trails off, his drunkenness catching up with the syllables of the words he’s saying.

She shifts back onto the heels of her boots.

The glow of the fire is making his eyes appear a particular shade of honey.

“I won’t be a distraction from him.”

“You two exist in two separate times,” Michael explains lowly.

“Well, maybe that’s the time you two should revisit. Maybe I should make it easy.”

“How exactly would you do that?” He implored. “By removing yourself from the picture?”

She swore she heard his voice hitch. She doesn’t have an immediate response. 

Instead, she takes a deep breath and looks up at the vastness of the unending dark sky.

“Maria…”

She meets his gaze.

“He doesn’t get to be the only person I ever love in my life.”

His tone is a bit more vulnerable and forthcoming then she’s ever experienced, which makes her knees almost wobble.

His gaze is akin to a laser as he awaits her response.

She can’t give him one.

“Please come here,” Michael poses softly.

She doesn’t comply.

“How did your hand heal?” Maria questions.

His expression goes blank. 

It’s not a coincidence and she knows it.

She noticed his hand the night that Max died. And things had been odd and only getting odder since. 

She felt it in her bones, she didn’t need access to someone’s palm to tell. Something monumental was happening in this town and with these people.

Michael’s lips part but nothing comes out.

His expression is broken and lonely and gutted.

And Maria has never related to any inadvertent display more in her entire life.

Despite wanting a verbal answer, she somehow knew. She sensed it in how his jaw set and his eyes were pained and his breath went shallow.

Before she realized what she was doing, she steps through the bit of space between them and reaches her hand down to graze the side of his face. 

Her comforting touch practically physically unglued him.

He turns his face into her wrist and muffles a sob.

“I know,” Maria whispers, her other hand runs across the base of his neck and into his curls.

She leans down, resting the side of her head on the top of his as his sobs grow more momentum. 

He tries to stop crying but can’t.

In the next moment, she’s on his lap and he’s bawling into her chest.

And maybe neither one of them knows how it’ll all turn out.

But at that moment they’re anchored to the truth of their unabiding resonance and need for the other.

And that’s more than sufficient.


End file.
